sharp sharp johannesburg 4 an offshoot andrew putter

this text appears under the video on youTube but it's worth pointing it out by adding it here too

This is the video component of a video-installation I made - called 'Secretly I Will Love You More.' It shows Maria van Riebeeck - a 17th century Dutch woman at the Cape of Good Hope. Maria is on record as having taken a 'Hottentot' (Khoikhoi) girl - Krotoa - into her home for a few years. Between 1652 and 1720, the Cape Dutch almost completely destroyed the indigenous Cape Khoikhoi. This artwork of mine imagines that Maria had so loved Krotoa, that she had learnt to speak Krotoa's language. In the lullaby I wrote for the work - translated by Pedro Dausab into the click-filled Nama language that would have sounded a bit like the now-extinct Khoikhoi spoken at the Cape 300 years ago - Maria sings of her love for the child Krotoa. At one stage she sings: 'I will love you as I love my own children: secretly I will love you more...' This work won the Spier Contemporary Award in 2007.